Apartheid
Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an authoritarian political culture based on baasskap, which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation's minority white population. Under this minoritarian system, white citizens held the highest status, followed by Indians, Coloureds and black Africans, in that order. The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day, particularly inequality.
Broadly speaking, apartheid was delineated into petty apartheid, which entailed the segregation of public facilities and social events, and grand apartheid, which strictly segregated housing and employment opportunities by race. The first apartheid law was the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949, followed closely by the Immorality Amendment Act of 1950, which made it illegal for most South African citizens to marry or pursue sexual relationships across racial lines. The Population Registration Act, 1950 classified all South Africans into one of four racial groups based on appearance, known ancestry, socioeconomic status, and cultural lifestyle: "Black", "White", "Coloured", and "Indian", the last two of which included several sub-classifications. Places of residence were determined by racial classification. Between 1960 and 1983, 3.5 million black Africans were removed from their homes and forced into segregated neighbourhoods as a result of apartheid legislation, in some of the largest mass evictions in modern history. Most of these targeted removals were intended to restrict the black population to ten designated "tribal homelands", also known as bantustans, four of which became nominally independent states. The government announced that relocated persons would lose their South African citizenship as they were absorbed into the bantustans.
Apartheid sparked significant international and domestic opposition, resulting in some of the most influential global social movements of the 20th century. It was the target of frequent condemnation in the United Nations and brought about extensive international sanctions, including arms embargoes and economic sanctions on South Africa. During the late 1970s and 1980s, internal resistance to apartheid became increasingly militant, prompting brutal crackdowns by the National Party ruling government and protracted sectarian violence that left thousands dead or in detention. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that there were 21,000 deaths from political violence, with 7,000 deaths between 1948 and 1989, and 14,000 deaths and 22,000 injuries in the transition period between 1990 and 1994. Some reforms of the apartheid system were undertaken, including allowing for Indian and Coloured political representation in parliament, but these measures failed to appease most activist groups.
Between 1987 and 1993, the National Party entered into bilateral negotiations with the African National Congress, the leading anti-apartheid political movement, for ending segregation and introducing majority rule. In 1990, prominent ANC figures, such as Nelson Mandela, were released from prison. Apartheid legislation was repealed on 17 June 1991, leading to non-racial elections in April 1994. Since the end of apartheid, elections have been open and competitive.
Precursors
Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning "separateness", or "the state of being apart", literally "apart-ness" or apart-hood". Its first recorded use was in 1929.Racial discrimination against Black people in South Africa dates to the beginning of large-scale European colonisation of South Africa with the Dutch East India Company's establishment of a trading post in the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, which eventually expanded into the Dutch Cape Colony. The company began the Khoikhoi–Dutch Wars in which it displaced the local Khoikhoi people, replaced them with farms worked by White settlers, and imported Black slaves from across the Dutch Empire. In the days of slavery, slaves required passes to travel away from their owners.
In 1797, the Landdrost and Heemraden, local officials, of Swellendam and Graaff-Reinet extended pass laws beyond slaves and decreed that all Khoikhoi moving about the country for any purpose should carry passes. This was confirmed by the British Colonial government in 1809 by the Hottentot Proclamation, which decreed that if a Khoikhoi were to move they would need a pass from their owner or a local official. Ordinance No. 49 of 1828 decreed that prospective Black immigrants were to be granted passes for the sole purpose of seeking work. These passes were to be issued for Coloureds and Khoikhoi but not for other Africans, who were nonetheless forced to carry passes.
During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the British Empire captured and annexed the Dutch Cape Colony. Under the 1806 Cape Articles of Capitulation the new British colonial rulers were required to respect previous legislation enacted under Roman-Dutch law, and this led to a separation of the law in South Africa from English Common Law and a high degree of legislative autonomy. The governors and assemblies that governed the legal process in the various colonies of South Africa launched on an independent legislative path different from the rest of the British Empire.
The United Kingdom's Slavery Abolition Act 1833 provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in most parts of the British Empire. The trade of slaves was made illegal throughout the British Empire by 1837, with Nigeria and Bahrain being the last British territories to abolish slavery. The act overrode the Cape Articles of Capitulation. To comply with the act, the South African legislation was expanded to include Ordinance 1 in 1835, which effectively changed the status of slaves to indentured labourers. This was followed by Ordinance 3 in 1848, which introduced an indenture system for Xhosa that was little different from slavery.
The various South African colonies passed legislation throughout the rest of the 19th century to limit the freedom of unskilled workers, to increase the restrictions on indentured workers and to regulate the relations between the races. The discoveries of diamonds and gold in South Africa also raised racial inequality between White people and Black people. Some scholars have argued that Apartheid's ideology can be reflected in Afrikaner Calvinism, with its parallel traditions of racialism; for example, as early as 1933; the executive council of the Broederbond formulated a recommendation for mass segregation.
In the Cape Colony, which previously had a liberal and multi-racial constitution and a system of Cape Qualified Franchise open to men of all races, the Franchise and Ballot Act of 1892 raised the property franchise qualification and added an educational element, disenfranchising a disproportionate number of the Cape's non-White voters, and the Glen Grey Act of 1894 instigated by the government of Prime Minister Cecil Rhodes limited the amount of land Africans could hold. Similarly, in Natal, the Natal Legislative Assembly Bill of 1894 deprived Indians of the right to vote. In 1896 the South African Republic brought in two pass laws requiring Africans to carry a badge. Only those employed by a master were permitted to remain on the Rand, and those entering a "labour district" needed a special pass. During the Second Boer War, the British Empire cited racial exploitation of Blacks as a cause for its war against the Boer republics. However, the peace negotiations for the Treaty of Vereeniging demanded "the just predominance of the white race" in South Africa as a precondition for the Boer republics unifying with the British Empire.
In 1905 the General Pass Regulations Act denied Black people the vote and limited them to fixed areas, and in 1906 the Asiatic Registration Act of the Transvaal Colony required all Indians to register and carry passes. Beginning in 1906 the South African Native Affairs Commission under Godfrey Lagden began implementing a more openly segregationist policy towards non-Whites. The latter was repealed by the British government but re-enacted in 1908. In 1910, the Union of South Africa was created as a self-governing dominion, which continued the legislative program: the South Africa Act enfranchised White people, giving them complete political control over all other racial groups while removing the right of Black people to sit in parliament; the Native Land Act prevented Black people, except those in the Cape, from buying land outside "reserves"; the Natives in Urban Areas Bill was designed to force Black people into "locations"; the Urban Areas Act introduced residential segregation and provided cheap labour for industry led by White people; the Colour Bar Act prevented Black mine workers from practising skilled trades; the Native Administration Act made the British Crown rather than paramount chiefs the supreme head over all African affairs; the Native Land and Trust Act complemented the 1913 Native Land Act and, in the same year, the Representation of Natives Act removed previous Black voters from the Cape voters' roll and allowed them to elect three Whites to Parliament.
The United Party government of Jan Smuts began to move away from the rigid enforcement of segregationist laws during World War II, but faced growing opposition from Afrikaner nationalists who wanted stricter segregation. Post-war, one of the first pieces of segregating legislation enacted by Smuts' government was the Asiatic Land Tenure Bill, which banned land sales to Indians and Indian descendant South Africans. The same year, the government established the Fagan Commission. Amid fears that integration would eventually lead to racial assimilation, the Opposition Herenigde Nasionale Party established the Sauer Commission to investigate the effects of the United Party's policies. The commission concluded that integration would bring about a "loss of personality" for all racial groups. The HNP incorporated the commission's findings into its campaign platform for the 1948 South African general election, which it won.